I have long believed that modern Book of Mormon apologia is expressly designed to render the book unfalsifiable, from a historical perspective. The translation errors combined with the idea that the Book of Mormon peoples were relatively minor participants in ancient Mesoamerica, had completely adopted the culture of the locality, and thereby cannot be reasonably expected to be detected, indisputably render the Book of Mormon unfalsifiable. Whether or not that is a deliberate maneuver is, of course, unknown, but certainly apologists themselves, to some degree, appreciate this phenomenon:
From John Clark’s BYU devotional, the Q/A period:
Those who choose not to believe it [i.e., the Book of Mormon] will never believe it; those who choose to believe it already do. ...
But I'm, I would never tell anybody to try to prove the Book of Mormon is true through physical evidence, just because of the way metaphysics and epistemology work—it's not possible. And so, you have to get the testimony some other way, and then the evidence will become very clear. If you're on the opposing side you can say we basically just, ah, brained washed ourselves (one or two words inaudible). You're free to think that—we're not doing anybody any harm.
And, no, I can't convince any of my archeology colleagues that the evidence proves the BoMor is true. They have read it, but they just read it like they're reading an archeology book, and that's not going to go anywhere.
Well, for example, you had this flap about DNA recently. ... The DNA question is never going to be a problem. It only works one way, and in our favor. But the only reason that it looked like a flap or a problem is because they say: Well, Mormons believe (first of all they tell us what we believe) Mormons believe that all Indians in North and South America descended from these people who came over that are described in the Book of Mormon. I grew up believing that—but that's false, that's absolutely wrong.
And so once you say there were other people here, you say: OK, where were the Nephites, and how many more people were here. We have all kinds of other DNA signatures to worry about all of a sudden. It may be that we never find any Hebrew DNA (whatever that looks like) in the New World. ... But if we do find some, that's fine; if we don't find some, that's fine too. There's no way that negative evidence on that hurts the Book of Mormon whatsoever once you believe in a limited geography. If you believe in a global geography, you're basically done, toasted, game over.
There are several remarkable assertions in this excerpt: one thing that jumped out at me immediately was that the evidence isn’t clear UNLESS you already have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. That smacks of pseudoscience. But it is mainly the bolded portion I discuss here: the LGT theory renders the Book of Mormon unfalsifiable – or, In other words, “there’s no way negative evidence on that hurts the Book of Mormon whatsoever once you believe in a limited geography.”
When I participated on FAIR, I noted this frequently, and apologists always disagreed with me. So I attempted to demonstrate my point on one of the frequent “horse” threads:
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... 578&st=320
I utilized a text that most scholars accept to be a hoax, for very good reasons: the Gospel of Barnabas. I then proceeded to defend it using the same methodology I had seen used to defend the Book of Mormon. Ben McGuire challenged my use of “figurative” language being used in the translation to excuse the anachronism of the Jubilee in the Gospel of Barnabas. My post was actually an almost direct copy of a post that DCP had just made on another thread, in defense of the Book of Mormon. I simply altered the statement to fit the new example.
beastie
May 31 2005, 09:50 AM
Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this thread.
Ben asked me to support my contention that the text demanded a figurative use of Jubilee. It's the only way the text makes sense. If we assume a first century origin for the text, and ask how it makes sense within that context, the only answer is figurative.
Besides, unless you can demonstrate that no individual in first century Israel ever used the Jubilee in a figurative context, yours is a none-too-compelling argument from silence.
As the saying has it, all that's needed to disprove the contention that all crows are black is one white crow. It is impossible to survey all of the "crows" who ever lived in ancient Israel. The evidence is gone, never to be recovered.
(note, thanks to Dan Peterson for demonstrating this particular argument on the thread "Mesoamericans, Pagans or Christians"? I thought I'd have to do various searches to find it exemplified, and then my procrastination paid off and it fell in my lap.)
Note that I wasn’t being particularly coy and even mentioned that where I had obtained this argument. This was Dan’s post that inspired mine:
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... topic=8544
Posted by: Daniel Peterson May 30 2005, 09:40 PM
Unless, beastie, you can demonstrate that no individual in pre-classic Mesoamerica was ever a universalist or an atheist yours is a none-too-compelling argument from silence.
As the saying has it, all that's needed to disprove the contention that all crows are black is one white crow. It is impossible to survey all of the "crows" who ever lived in pre-classic Mesoamerica. The evidence is gone, never to be recovered.
Ben, for some reason, did not quite understand what I had done, and informed me of the very point I’d been trying to make:
beastie's
QUOTE
As the saying has it, all that's needed to disprove the contention that all crows are black is one white crow. It is impossible to survey all of the "crows" who ever lived in ancient Israel. The evidence is gone, never to be recovered.
ben:
In other words, you are attempting to make you claim unfalisifiable.
I congratulated Ben for finally getting my point, and he replied:
Benjamin McGuire
Jun 1 2005, 10:24 AM
And Beastie - the problem is that this is not what Brant or I do with the text of the Book of Mormon.
Ben
The thread went on for a while longer, and, predictably, little resolution was had. But I did enjoy a very rare moment on FAIR – I had finally made my point in a way that was inescapable.
The funny thing about this which I never noticed until tonight, when I was putting this together (as per Scratch’s request on another thread), the thread on which DCP made the infamous “white crow” argument was the thread that got me banned from FAIR. The last post on the thread was this one:
Scott Gordon
Jul 3 2005, 09:41 AM
I am putting on my president hat for a moment here.
I haven't paid any attention to this thread until just now. Obviously the moderators are bending over backwards to accommodate uncooperative posters and that isn't what I want for this board.
So, I am making an executive decision and overruling the moderators. I am suspending Beastie's account and closing this thread.
Beastie, Sorry we couldn't work this out.
In reality, I had bent over backwards to provide a great deal of documentation as requested, over and over. To this day I have no idea how I was “uncooperative”.